Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Just curious if there are ejection seats in the B-52. I got into a debate the other day in my aircraft design class about whether the -52 has them or not. I thought they did, thought some even shot downward, but the other person was convinced that it was a myth. Anyone know for sure?

--The Battle Axe

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BattleAx09, I just got to crawl around a BUFF at an airshow and I can tell you that definitely, without a doubt, I am 100% certain that yes, the B-52 DOES indeed have ejection seats Very Happy

. Two of them do exit downward and the other two go up. I'm curious as to how the guys in the downward exiting seats would perform a manual bailout Confused

? I'm sure Kevin will help us both out with the details.

Kevin, are you out there?

parrothead, Downward bailout was accomplished by firing one of the two seats. (It was highly unlikely that both would fail.) Any crewman whose seat didn't work and any supernumary crew would then jump out the hatch opening left by the ejected seat.

Upward seats were by Weber, two versions that changed around the B-52G/H timeframe to a larger seat with a angled headrest from a round top headrest. If I recall correctly there are four upwards btw.

Downward seats were Stanley designs and remained the same basic seat thru all versions.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

kmceject, Thanks for the info and the correction! Are those upward seats zero/zero? I know there's a reason for zero/zero capability, and I was thinking of that sort of scenario for the downward seats. Obviously, the downward seats can't be zero/zero, so that's why I was asking about manual bailout. Do you know how the guys in the downward seats would get out the quickest if they're either too low or actually on the ground?

You know, thanks to your site I'm pretty familiar with normal upward seats and how they work. How do the downward seats work? Do they have a rocket, too? What are the differences in injury possibilities? Thanks for being such a great resource on this!

I doubt the lower seats are zero/zero Shocked

Roscoe wrote:

I doubt the lower seats are zero/zero Shocked

Nope, they aren't. Neither are the ones above. The downward ones are the last catapult only seats in US service.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Not only are none of the seats zero/zero, they also have a very limited performance envelope low to the ground. Case in point, two separate incidents. The first, was one that one of my co-workers witnessed as a load toad at U-Tapao AB, Thailand. A BUFF had been severely damaged by hostile fire, during a bomb run over Nam. The pilot was able to bring it back, but lost control of the jet at the lower speed required for landing. The nose dropped, and the plane started to roll over to one side. I believe more than one tried to punch out, and I think there was perhaps one survivor. I'll ask him and write another thread when I know more. The second incident is one that is very famous in aviation annals, for all the wrong reasons. Everyone, by now seems to be familiar with the 1994 mishap (and I use that term loosely) involving the BUFF pilot at Fairchild AFB, who attempted a roll during a demo flight. One person did punch out, but was too low, and at almost a 90 degree nose down AOA, when he pulled the handles. The reason I use the term mishap loosely in that incident, was because I feel it was more a murder/suicide than an "Aircraft Mishap." Notice to all who have ever dreamed or debated this: IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO ROLL A BUFF!

Beers and MiGs were made to be pounded!

Sorry for any misunderstanding. I was wondering how the crew would get out of the jet in a severe emergency on the ground. I never thought the downward seats were zero/zero Embarassed

! If none of the seats are zero/zero, how do they get out?

TC, those are indeed very tragic incidents. I'm just curious, why is it physically impossible to roll a BUFF? Didn't a test pilot roll the first Boeing 707?

The Fairchild AFB 'mishap' was a horrible situation. The pilot put the crew into a situation they had no idea about. The only person to initiate ejection was the co-pilot, who could see the instrumentation and the view outside to know what was coming. His hatch is visible in some of the stills of the event. It struck the tail at about the same time as the wing struck the ground. His seats progress up the rails was terminated by ground impact unfortunately. I know someone who worked the egress investigation. Even if he had punched, it is not likely he would have survived.

Egress on the ground from a BUFF is the old open hatches and jump style. The overheads have ropes or other lowering devices near them. Typically on an aircraft as big as a BUFF you have a little time before it becomes impossible to ground egress. In a fighter you are a lot nearer to the stuff that burns and goes boom.

I think I mentioned in another thread a guy who ejected from a BUFF and survived sans chute. He struck a snowdrift before seat/man separation and was injured but survived and made a full recovery. In his case the aircraft was travelling over mountains and the tail fell off (1963 if memory serves. Three BUFFs lost tails that year.) His pilot ejected and got a good chute, landing o.k. Co-pilot punched out, got a good chute, but wind drift drove him into a tree and killed him. Luck of the draw... rest of the crew didn't get time to punch.

Rolling a BUFF might be possible, but it will be a spiral downwards. Rolling one at the altitude this schmuck was at was suicide for sure. I think he was trying a knife edge pass, but even that was rediculous at that altitude.

Kevin
The Ejection Site
ps a great read on the Fairchild mishap is available <a href="http://s92270093.onlinehome.us/crmdevel/resources/paper/darkblue/darkblue.htm">here</a>. This document makes a very strong case that it wasn't just the stick actuator to blame in the mishap. The illustration on the top of the page is from the photo showing the hatch cover in the air near the tail.

That incident was poor leadership all around. Several heads rolled over it, none the least being his former IP who was in a Numbered-AF staff assignment at Davis Monthan at the time. One of the men killed in the crash was a full colonel, who was making his fini flight, with his wife and kids on the tarmac watching. Bad deal. 4 men dead, and a perfectly good a/c destroyed, all because this puke thought he was Maverick in Top Gun. But I shall cease my rant there. As for rolling the BUFF: With the speed the a/c would have to travel to accomplish the roll, and the amount of wing flex the BUFF experiences on just any given day, plus so many added factors...Oh yeah, one of which being that the BUFF doesn't actually have ailerons, rather spoilers, which are not very suitable for the task of rolling. I would say that if one were to even ATTEMPT the manuever, then I would want to be nowhere near that plane. When the B-52 roll was attempted, it was low to the ground, and at a low speed. The plane went more into a Split-S than a roll. Yes, parrothead, Tex Johnston rolled the 707 prototype, but the 707 is a smaller plane, with a smaller, and more strengthened wingspan. He was at a high altitude, and a high speed when he rolled the jet, and his roll was actually a barrel roll, a much more graceful manuever than an aileron roll, which that idiot in the 52 tried. I'll find out more about that incident from U Tapao, and I'll post more later.

Beers and MiGs were made to be pounded!

kmceject, thanks for the info! The guy who hit the snow is in a very small minority Shocked

! I don't think anyone else has survived ejection without getting past the man/seat separation step!

TC, I see what you mean. Do you think a BUFF could do a barrel roll at a higher altitude? I'd think it would have a chance since a barrel roll keeps at least some positive g on the aircraft throughout the maneuver. Believe me, I understand that the BUFF was made to fly long distances with heavy loads and not to be a fighter jet!

Like I said before, if one were to even ATTEMPT the manuever, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that plane! Shocked

The biggest problem with the BUFF performing any aerobatics is the amount of wing flex. Compare the BUFF's wings to the Viper's and the BUFF's would be like tinfoil.

Oh yeah, Col. George "Bud" Day (USAF, Ret., POW Vietnam, CMH) once survived an ejection from an F-100 where his chute never deployed. He was low enough to the forest, that the trees cushioned his impact. He calls it his luckiest "Day." Actually, I'd say the day he was released from the Hanoi Hilton would be his luckiest day, but maybe that's just me. Wink

Beers and MiGs were made to be pounded!

parrothead, ejections without catapillar club membership is rare, but not as rare as you'd think. I know of <strike>six</strike> er, seven (thanks TC) people who have survived it. Most have some rather severe injuries and spend many months in the hospital and rehab, however several have returned to flight status.

On my site there is one such story of a Canberra nav who survived a runway level ejection as the aircraft was cartwheeling. He was the only survivor, and the photos he allowed me to use show the wreckage of the aircraft, his bent seat, and the packed parachute he was sitting on after the mishap.

Two guys from a Sea Vixen survived a dual ejection with no chutes in a miracle I have yet to write up, only injury to them was one thumb bent back (very interesting and humorous reason for that!)

A KANG F-4E suffered a steering failure on takeoff roll ending up with the nose gear being rammed backwards on impact with a taxiway. The strut rammed the pilot's seat partway up the rails and sequenced out the rear seat out of sequence. The WSO struck the ground simultaneous with seat man sep.

An A-4 Skyhawk pilot ejected in a scene reminicent of Will Smith's ejection in ID4, and slammed face first into a snowdrift. This one is unconfirmed. I have heard two versions of it, but neither has a date, place, unit or pilot's name. Both were quoted as stuff read in official USN magazines, but neither reporter still had the mag or the date. Both thought early seventies. One story says the seat/man hit face first into about 6ft of snow and the pilot had to dig his way out. The other mentions an anecdote about the return trip down the mountain.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

I hope I get the chance to fly in an aircraft with an ejection seat someday. While I hope I never have to use it, I just hope I get to take the silk/nylon elevator down Smile

! Thanks for the great info, guys!

Quote:

Nope, they aren't. Neither are the ones above. The downward ones are the last catapult only seats in US service.

Kevin, I know you've explained ejection seats ad-nauseum, but I'm still a little fuzzy on some of the terminology. What do you mean by catapult only?

Parrothead, ejection seats originally had either hot gas or cold gas to eject them. In other words the used either a gas generator like a 37mm cartridge to generate hot gas or had tanks of nitrogen or other gas to shove the seat out of the aircraft (excluding some prototypical experiments with springs or bungees that didn't really make production.) The problem with these seats that are called catapult-only or generation 1 seats was that they could only kick the pilot out so fast. Any faster or more powerfully and they would risk injury to the pilot. Some of the B-52 seats use hot gas (cartridge seats) that achieve about 80 foot per second rates at the top of the stroke. This can only be achieved with a very high rate of rise of the force, which risks injury to the back of the occupant. This is where the major lore of broken backs with ejection seats come from. The high speeds are needed to force the pilot over the tail or empenage of the aircraft.

In the 1960s the rocket seats were begun by adding rockets to continue the acceleration. This allows the seat to be accelerated slower and yet get higher relative altitude to the airframe. Martin-Baker pioneered adding underseat rockets to their seats like the H7AF used in the F-4E. American seats combined the catapult and rocket into a single unit called a ROCAT (ROcket-CATapult). This was an obvious solution in some ways in that it allowed the seat to be the same with just the change of the catapult. Other companies, most notably Stencel Aero Engineering used seat back rockets. These are still in service on the AV-8B Stencels, and the AT-37 upgraded Weber seats. Each of these types has positive and negatives, but that is another article...

The key to understand is that adding the rockets reduces the peak acceleration, which limits the risk of back injuries. Early catapults were designed with a limit of rise of a max of 300G/Sec. Newer seats use 150G/Sec as a red-line. (Note most catapult seats were closer to 200G/sec, but not all.) The max G on a catapult seat would also be higher, probably nearer to 20Gz than to the ACES II 12-14Gz average. Note max G varies based on the amount of mass being accelerated (how fat/thin is the pilot), the temperature, and other factors.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Ejection Seats in B-52